Invest in friends for a happy old age

CV Sastry retired from HAL in 2001. An IIT Bombay alumnus, Sastry was also one of the founding members of the Association of Former Executives of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HALE). “We have a website, too,“ he says, smiling. “HALE was instrumental in getting a group health insurance scheme from the HAL management for its retired employees. We made it happen,“ he says proudly.
In 2009, Sastry was diagnosed with cancer.“But for the past couple of years, I've been free, and God willing, may remain so,“ he says. “I'm 75, now, and in a few weeks, I'll be 67,“ he says, chuckling at his little joke. Indeed, Sastry neither looks nor moves like a septuagenarian cancer survivor. There's an alertness in his eyes and a spring in his step that make him seem much younger. And as far as he is concerned, one of the biggest reasons for that is the quality time he spends with his friends, his peer group.
If Sastry looks like he is in his early 60s, 76-year-old Sathya Chari looks like she's in her mid-forties. Three months ago, she went for a tour of Kerala with friends from her yoga class. “There's a difference between the love your friends give you and the love you get from your family,“ she says. “After all, when you're young, it's taken for granted that there are things you can share with your friends that you can't share with your family. Why is it that people think it holds any less true as you grow older?“ she asks.
Live long and prosper?
As societies develop and become economically better off, birth rates decline, and lifespans lengthen, the proportion of older people in the population goes up. This is especially true of Bengaluru, which was, after all, a pensioner's paradise.
But with longer lifespans come a group of aging-related issues, mental and physical. Loneliness, depression, dementia, Alzheimers ­ words and names that were rarely heard thirty years ago, but which have become depressingly common these days.
Dr. Naren P Rao, associate professor of psychiatry, NIMHANS, is part of the IISc's Centre for Neuroscience. He, along with others, has been working on a study on aging and age-related conditions. “Around 300 people are examined every year ­ using tools like magnetic resonance imaging, advanced genetics and molecular tests ­ for 5-10 years,“ he says. The study will help with early detection of people at risk of developing dementia so that therapeutic strategies can be initiated early, he says.
According Rao, it is important to identify the symptoms of memory decline at an early stage and meet the doctor early than wait until the disease progresses to a severe state. And for that, it helps to have people who can notice the early warning signs ­ people who engage the senior in regular conversation or participate in shared activities.And often, these aren't family members.
Industrial revolution
“There is a culturally mediated way of approaching old age ­ where the care of older people happens within the family. Now this had been the norm for societies everywhere until the beginning of the industrial revolution.But with the industrial era came large cities and different ways of organizing society. The idea of family members taking care of older people gradually became infeasible, especially as geographical mobility increased and family members would move away in search of economic opportunity or education,“ says Dr Gopukrishnan Pillai, consultant in geriatric medicine at Narayana Health. “Now, in our society, even if seniors live in the same physical space as their children and do not experience physical loneliness, the quality of the relationship may not be strong enough to keep emotional loneliness away. There's also the issue of enforced infantilism that comes with ageism. When we speak of older people, we find ourselves talking about disability, and not ability ­ even though these are people who have led full lives, shouldered significant responsibilities and have a wealth of experience,“ he says.
And families, however loving they may be, sometimes fail to recognize this. For Padmavathi, an 81-year-old former engineer at All India Radio, the choice was clear. Her US-based son asked her to leave her Malleswaram home to join him. She wasn't interested. “My friends are here,“ she says, gesturing at the laughing, cheerful group around her at the Nightingales Elders Enrichment Centre in Malleswaram. “Why would I want to leave?“
Getting together
“You've probably heard of my brother, CH Lokanath, the actor,“ says 78-year-old CH Choodanath. The 'CH', he says, somewhat shyly, stands for Channapatna Hanumanthappa. “And while my physical age is 78, my biological age is 60,“ he says with a twinkle in his eye. The former general manager at HMT retired in 1997. Three years ago, Choodanath, an avid gardener, was at the Sri Vinayaka Nursery in JP Nagar when he heard that the Nightingales Trust's Bagchi Centre for Active Ageing had just opened nearby. “I joined up immediately,“ he says. For him, the biggest draw, apart from the people he would meet and the friends he would make, was the seated aerobics sessions.“Even though we were sitting, at the end of the hour, we were all sweating,“ he says, remembering his first session. “I went back home, feeling that I had given my body and my mind a good workout.“ Since then, his visit to his friends at the Bagchi centre has become a regular part of his day. “My wife was initially jealous,“ he says smiling.
For Choodanath, who remembers going from school to school in Mysuru, carrying a huge Indian flag on August 15, 1947, it's also about shared values. He talks about his career at HMT, where he saw the steady decline of one of India's most prestigious PSUs into shell of its former self. “It's its former self. “It's a different world now,“ he says. “But here, with my friends, I feel more optimisitic ­ and their presence strengthens my belief in the future.“
At 61, MR Suresh is one of the youngest people at the Bagchi centre. He talks with the easy assurance of a lifelong marketing man. “I come here three times a week. It does me good to get out home. I come here for the camaraderie, of course,“ he says. He pauses and reflects. “Here you find a different kind of role model, people you want to emulate in the way they handle what life throws at them,“ he says.
Not everybody finds it easy to make friends after a certain age, though. For 83-year-old Varadarajulu, the loss of his wife a year ago left him with crippling loneliness. He also found it difficult to meet new people. “My son calls me from Delhi once in a while, but it's not the same thing. I started visiting the temple a lot more. There are others there, people of my age, regular visitors. I've had a few good conversations with them. God is with me,“ he says. He smiles. “The prasada is also good.“
Building a convoy
There's something called the 'Convoy Theory of Social Relations'. In this model, people go through life embedded in a personal network of individuals from whom they give and receive social support. “Put simply, the peer group equivalent of a family group is a social convoy,“ says Pillai. And for older adults, social convoys are critical to their well-being. “But people don't think of developing these peer networks until after retirement, sometimes until they are in their seventies. But people need to start believing that they are going to grow old by themselves. You are not going to grow old with your brother or your cousins or sometimes, even your children or spouse. And you have to invest in and developpeer relationships as you go along,“ he says. “You have to factor this in into the decisions you make through your life.“